The fabrication of semiconductor devices using printing techniques provides a potentially inexpensive means of producing complex semiconductor circuits. This type of semiconductor fabrication promises to extend the use of semiconductor circuits to many new applications, as well as providing an alternative to conventional silicon-based fabrication processes.
Semiconductors fabricated by printing techniques have an advantage over conventional silicon based semiconductors in that, in addition to lower manufacturing costs, they do not possess the inherent rigidity of silicon-based semiconductors. Thus, printed semiconductors may be formed on a wider variety of substrates including, for example, clothing, food labels and toys.
However, printed semiconductor devices have so far only been reduced to a micrometre scale and are, therefore, considerably larger than the nanometre scale of their silicon counterparts. This limit on the scale of printed semiconductor devices acutely reduces the number of applications for which they may potentially be used, for example printed semiconductor devices of a micrometre scale are unsuitable for use in microprocessors and signal processing circuits.